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WE15 Rapid Fire Sessions – Call for Applications!

Applications have opened for the WE15 Rapid Fire Sessions in Nashville, TN! Rapid Fire allows SWE members to present their research to a panel of judges and audience of peers from a wide array of STEM disciplines. Emphasizing concision and clarity, these sessions contain a series of five-minute presentations followed by a brief Q&A session for each presenter. Presenters are given feedback immediately following the session.

This is a great way to receive feedback on your presenting skills. The audience is smaller, and presentation times are shorter than for traditional conference platform presentations. Rapid Fire also serves as a great way to justify your attendance at WE15 to your advisor and others!

In addition to presenting your own research in an efficient and concise manner, we ask that you consider how your research fits into the world in a broader sense, specifically in the context of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering (http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/challenges.aspx). With technological advances becoming more frequent and humanity becoming more interconnected than ever before, it is imperative that we reflect on how our technological discoveries affect humanity at large, not only in our own local daily environments. Toward this aim, the NAE has identified the below grand challenges facing engineers of the 21st century:

Make Solar Energy Economical

Provide Energy from Fusion

Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods

Manage the Nitrogen Cycle

Provide Access to Clean Water

Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure

Advance Health Informatics

Engineer Better Medicines

Reverse-Engineer the Brain

Prevent Nuclear Terror

Secure Cyberspace

Enhance Virtual Reality

Advance Personalized Learning

Engineer the Tools of Scientific Discovery

We invite you to reflect on how these challenges fit into your own research and write your abstract in this context. If you are interested in participating in a Rapid Fire Session, please fill out the application here. The application will be closed at 11:59 PM EST on Monday, September 21. Applicants will be notified of their status by Monday, September 28, 2015. All graduate students are STRONGLY encouraged to apply!